Renoir, Jean, 1894-1979, French film director and writer, b. Paris; son of Pierre Auguste Renoir. He made his first film in 1926. Gathering around him a devoted coterie of actors and technicians, Renoir developed a collective approach to filmmaking, favoring improvisational acting, open-air shooting, and stories stressing the changeable nature of morality. Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937), a balanced, compassionate study of people in time of war, is considered one of the greatest motion pictures ever made.

Renoir worked in Hollywood during World War II, but never fully adapted to studio filmmaking. His postwar French films play on the slippery relationship between film and theater. His films include The Crime of M. Lange (1935), A Day in the Country (1936), The Human Beast (1938), The Rules of the Game (1939), The Southerner (1944), Diary of a Chambermaid (1945), The River (1951), and Picnic on the Grass (1959). Renoir wrote the biography Renoir, My Father (tr. 1962) and a novel, The Notebooks of Captain Georges (tr. 1966).

Renoir, Pierre Auguste, 1841-1919, French impressionist painter and sculptor, b. Limoges. Renoir went to work at the age of 13 in Paris as a decorator of factory-made porcelain, copying the works of Boucher. In 1862 he entered M. C. Gleyre's studio, where he formed lasting friendships with Bazille, Monet and Sisley. His early work reflected myriad influences including those of Courbet, Manet, Corot, Ingres and Delacroix. He began to earn his living with portraiture in the 1870s; an important work of this period was Madame Charpentier and her Children (1876; Metropolitan Mus.). Simultaneously he developed the ability to paint joyous, shimmering color and flickering light in outdoor scenes such as The Swing and the festive Moulin de la Galette (both: 1876; Louvre). Renoir traveled in Algeria and in Italy (1881-82), returning to Paris where a successful exhibition (1883) established him financially. He had gone beyond impressionism. His ecstatic sensuality, particularly in his opulent, generalized images of women, and his admiration of the Italian masters removed him from the primary impressionist concern: to imitate the effects of natural light. After a brief period, often termed "harsh" or "tight," in which his forms were closely defined in outline (e.g., The Bathers, 1884-87; private coll.), his style of the 1890s changed, diffusing both light and outline, and with dazzling, opalescent colors describing voluptuous nudes, radiant children, and lush summer landscapes. From 1903, Renoir fought the encroaching paralysis of arthritis at the same time that his work attained its greatest sensual power and monumentality. Despite illness and personal tragedy he began to produce major works of sculpture (e.g., Victorious Venus, Renoir Mus., Cagnes-sur-Mer). Among his most celebrated paintings are: Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881; Phillips Coll., Washington, D.C.); Dance at Bougival (1883; Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston); Lady Sewing (Art Inst., Chicago); and Bather (1917-18; Philadelphia Mus. of Art). Renoir's work is represented in most of the important galleries in the world. The Art Institute of Chicago; the Barnes Collection, Merion, Pa.; Clark Institute, Williamstown, Mass.; and the Louvre have large collections. His son, the film director Jean Renoir, wrote a biography (tr. 1962).

(born Sept. 15, 1894, Paris, France—died Feb. 12, 1979, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) French film director. The son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he discovered a passion for the cinema while recovering from wounds suffered in World War I. He directed his first film, La Fille de l'eau, in 1924. His films, in both silent and later eras, were noted for their deep appreciation for the unpredictability of human character. He cowrote the screenplays for many of his films, including Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), Madame Bovary (1934), The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936), and La Bête humaine (1938) as well as his two masterpieces, Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939). He lived in the U.S. (1940–51), where he directed The Southerner (1945), The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), and The River (1951).

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(born Sept. 15, 1894, Paris, France—died Feb. 12, 1979, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) French film director. The son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he discovered a passion for the cinema while recovering from wounds suffered in World War I. He directed his first film, La Fille de l'eau, in 1924. His films, in both silent and later eras, were noted for their deep appreciation for the unpredictability of human character. He cowrote the screenplays for many of his films, including Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), Madame Bovary (1934), The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936), and La Bête humaine (1938) as well as his two masterpieces, Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939). He lived in the U.S. (1940–51), where he directed The Southerner (1945), The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), and The River (1951).

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Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d’Anvers (most commonly referred to as Pink and Blue) is an oil painting by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Produced in Paris in 1881, the painting depicts the sisters Alice and Elisabeth, daughters of the Jewish banker Louis Raphael Cahen d’Anvers. It is considered one of the most popular works in the collection of the São Paulo Museum of Art, where it has been conserved since 1952.

Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d’Anvers

Renoir portrayed the two daughters of the banker Louis Raphael Cahen d'Anvers, the blonde, Elisabeth, born in December 1874, and the younger, Alice, in February 1876, when they were respectively six and five years old. The artist produced many portraits for the families of the Parisian Jewish community at the time, and Louis Cahen d'Anvers, married to Louise Morpurgo, descendant of a rich family from Trieste, was one of the most wealthy.

Renoir was commissioned to paint many portraits for this family, which he had met through the collector Charles Ephrussi, proprietor of the "Gazette des Beaux-Arts", and the idea was to make individual portraits of each daughter. Renoir portrayed the couple's oldest daughter, Irene, in a painting nowadays conserved at the Foundation E.G. Bührle, in Zürich. Afterwards, the family decided that the other two sisters would be painted together.

According to Camesasca, there were many sitting sessions until the end of February 1881, after what Renoir went to Algiers. After some decades, the youngest of the models would remember that "the boredom of the sitting sessions was recompensed by the pleasure of wearing the elegant lace dress".

Alice lived until 1965 and died in Nice, aged 89. Elisabeth had a tragic destiny. After divorcing from her first husband, the diplomat and count Jean de Forceville, she married with Alfred Émile Denfert Rochereau, and got divorced from him too. In 1987, during an exhibition of São Paulo Museum of Art collection in the Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny, Switzerland, Elisabeth's nephew, Jean de Monbrison, wrote a letter to the museum reporting her sad end: she was converted to Catholicism at a young age, but even so she was sent to Auschwitz due to her Jewish descent, and died on the way to concentration camp, in march 1944, aged 69.

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